Google is constantly updating and evolving various tools to help people and businesses test website performance. The latest round of updates is no exception to this trend: there are several small, but extremely pertinent analytics tools now available on its Google Optimise platform.
Google released a statement about their reasons for the update, saying: "With more and more customer interactions happening online, it’s critical to have a high-performing website. One of the best ways to improve the performance for your site is to run site tests, but it can be a challenge to manage all of them."
There are three key features designed to make running experiments and site tests easier: enhanced email notifications, labelling experiment IDs and a new scheduling tool.
1. Email Notifications
These notifications offer completely automated updates on the outcomes of your Google Optimise experiments. Whenever you set up a new site test, you have the option of receiving notifications direct to your inbox. You can easily opt in or out of this service, depending on the experiment you're currently running. This option is designed to make it simpler for you to develop an overview of the tests you're running without having to check back individually.
2. Experiment ID With Variant
This feature allows you to combine a specific Optimise Experiment with the version of your site your users saw; this will make it far easier to do analysis on any of your Optimise tests run in Google Analytics. Because all your experiment data is in a centralised place, you are easily able to create segments in Analytics within Analytics. A brief look at your Analytics report will help you to understand if Version A or Version B of your experiments has had a more positive impact on key statistics - clicks, engagement or revenue per user, for example. You can even figure out a target audience for a given segment, and work out how to reach these users through tweaking site experience or running campaigns.
3. Experiment Scheduling Tool
The final feature in this update is the new experiment scheduling tool. The added functionality allows you to build experiments around specified periods, negating the need to manually start them. This type of smart automation is a valuable addition to the suite of Google Optimise toolbox, allowing you to extract more insight from your data and run experiments with ease.
Optimise isn't an easy tool to master, but it does have the potential of maximising the efficiency of your site - particularly given this latest round of updates.
